Hey, I'm a student designer. I'm working on a game with a group of people as well as a Flash game and a UT3 level. I need to write up some concepts and a GDD in order to graduate. Any feedback for what I've written would be great. Below are two different concepts. I wrote them as if I was actually working for a developer capable of creating them, so any comments on myself being unable to create these games is probably not valid. Infinity Squared Overview Infinity Squared is a third person action/adventure game for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Players take on the role of Joe Smith, a thirty-something overweight construction worker. He goes to work one day and finds out he lives in a video game. His first clue was his wife waking him up as a portrait with a text box and telling him to “Press [A or X] to continue” when she finished talking. Once at work, Joe is told a monkey has taken his wife to the top of the construction site. Everyone around him stays in the same place and only has one or two lines of dialog. As Joe climbs the unfinished building there are several very noticeable bugs: textures missing or misaligned, props floating in mid-air, objects popping in and popping out. Once Joe is very near the top the camera will shift to a side view and a very intentionally Donkey Kong-esque sequence will play out. The meat of the game will be sequences like this. The entire point of this game is to break the fourth wall repeatedly. Planned “bugs” will appear sporadic but actually be very calculated to keep the game from actually crashing or halting players' progress. The town Joe lives in will be stuck in limbo until he finds these buggy areas and clears them. Once he does this people will move to different places and have different lines of dialog. As a sort of progress indicator, the building the game begins with will be a little bit more complete each time the player discovers and clears a new buggy area. Each of these areas will contain a sequence that emulates and parodies either common genres or specific games. For example, there may be an area with random turn based RPG battles. Another area might play out as a shooter, another as a racing game, another as a beat-'em-up, etc. There will even be moments where the graphical style changes. After each area is cleared the player can revisit them with the standard world gameplay and explore. This varied gameplay will be achieved by simplifying the controls and using standard overarching functions for every button. Left analog stick will be used for movement, the right to control the camera (if possible), left trigger/L2 to centre the camera (if possible), right trigger/R2 to lock onto targets (if possible) or attack in cases where targets are aimed at with the right stick, A/X for movement based actions (jump, speed boost, etc.) and to accept choices in menus, B/Circle for attacks and to cancel in menus, X/Square as a universal interact button (talk, check, etc.), and Start to pause the game. Other buttons will not be used, but controls can be mapped to any button by players. The standard world will feature gameplay reminiscent of most 3D adventure games. The player will move around in third person and have full control over the camera. They can use X/Square to check things and talk to people and A/X to jump but they cannot attack. Key Features -Fourth wall breaking presentation and story add humour and provide explanations for typical video game shortcomings. -Sudden gameplay shifts parody and pay homage to different games and genres. -Simple and intuitive control scheme allows players to handle gameplay shifts. Palette Knight Overview Palette Knight is a third person action/puzzle game for the Nintendo Wii that relies heavily on colour-based mechanics. The player character is a boy named Pal, whose gray world is stunned by the appearance of a solid black fortress. When this occurs, Pal turns bright white... as does a legendary suit of armour. Pal dons the ancient suit and enters the fortress. Once inside he finds that black and white were just the beginning. Everything around him is coloured, including himself. As players progress through the fortress they will pass through forced gates that change Pal's armour colour. The armour colour will change how the player interacts with the environment. Everything is either red, orange, yellow, green, blue, or violet. Pal can be any of these colours. Objects the same colour as him can be climbed, objects with a colour adjacent to Pal's current colour are brekable, objects with a colour that is triadic with Pal's current colour are solid and unbreakable, and objects the opposite colour will repel him. The interior of the fortress itself is mostly gray, but the props within are all coloured. The gameplay will range from brain teasing puzzles to reflex testing platforming, but it will never lean too far in either direction. The entire game takes place inside the same main fortress. Most rooms will hold some sort of puzzle. Rooms will often be re-entered with a different armour colour, completely changing the challenge of that room and allowing players to reach areas they could not have the first time through. Players can take on a wide variety of enemies using an arsenal of weapons. Players begin with the standard sword and shield, but eventually end up with a whip, a mace, and a crossbow. The Wii remote will register horizontal and vertical movements as two different attacks with each weapon. The crossbow has the added function of being aimed in first person. Enemies will all be primary and secondary colours. Enemies the same colour as Pal will fight alongside players, enemies that are an adjacent colour are easy to kill and ignore players until attacked, enemies that are a triadic colour are stronger and more aggressive, enemies the opposite of Pal's current colour are no stronger than the triadic enemies but much more aggressive. Because opposite colours repel in this world, each hit Pal gives or takes with an opposite enemy will send whichever was hit flying. Enemies can be locked onto by pressing the Z trigger. There will be several bosses within the fortress. Bosses will be mostly black with coloured components that serve as weak points. Key Features -Colour changing mechanic adds a new twist to action/adventure and platforming conventions. -Elaborate puzzles challenge players at every turn. -Intense action sequences keep the adventure exciting. -Revisit familiar areas with a new colour and experience new gameplay.

I'll give my comments later, but can you tell me what school is it? I'm interested, but I'm french, maybe it would be too hard? (I'm almost bilingual though).

They both sound interesting and different, which is good. For the first one, the glitches sound cool, but I did have one idea. Maybe, to beat the game, he has to use these glitches to his advantage. Like in the good ol' days when to kill someone you would glitch yourself in to a unreachable area and shoot from there. Do something like that, or maybe like have ways in which the player can "break" the game to give him special powers (kinda like in the Matrix)

I go to the Art Institute of Vancouver-Burnaby, in Canada.

I like the idea of using glitches to your advantage a lot. Maybe certain visual cues could be given for stuff like that... like if there's a wireframe wall you can walk through it and end up outside of the level geometry but able to see in and re-enter at any time.